


Power Play

by LyraNgalia



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Episode: s02e01 A Scandal in Belgravia, F/M, Mild S&M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Power Dynamics, Power Play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-14
Updated: 2013-01-14
Packaged: 2017-11-25 10:55:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/638150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LyraNgalia/pseuds/LyraNgalia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Woman meets the Consulting Criminal face-to-face for the first time. Just how well do power players take to being played? And how does one survive the game? Takes place during the very beginning of <i>A Scandal in Belgravia</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Power Play

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BlueKiwi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueKiwi/gifts).



> For BlueKiwi, my friend and partner-in-crime, who challenges me to write things I don't think I can, and who understands when my brain shuts down in violent protest.

The pretty little redhead driver in Irene's employ was used to Irene's travel necessities, so when she was roused out of bed and told that her mistress needed to be at 51 Buckingham Gate in twenty-five minutes, she obeyed. Irene herself said nothing beyond giving the instruction, though she gave the girl a look of approval for how well she's pulled herself into her uniform with short notice. The towncar pulled up at the hotel without a sound, and the doorman waved her towards the interior courtyard.  
  
Irene watched him closely as she allowed him to help her out. Not surprised by her presence, not at three o'clock in the morning, and he knew exactly where to send her. His hands were calloused against hers, and she felt strength in the fingers, steady hands used to violent work, that reveled in it in the same way other people reveled in sex. Moriarty's man, not the hotel's. That was important to know.  
  
She didn't let slip what she's seen, and told her driver to go home, to come back in a few hours, while at the same time slipping her hand into the pocket of her fur coat, texting discreetly that she should wait with the towncar a block away to the east. This was the witching hour, after all, and she walked into the lion's den. It was only wise to keep her own council and her own means of escape open..  
  
The hotel lobby was silent except for the sharp, staccato click of her stiletto heels against the marble, each step steady and echoing like a gunshot through the space. It announced her presence better than the footman, took the theatrical narrative out of the Consulting Criminal's hands and into her own. She expected him to realize it, to realize that she was not some mewling syndicate come to beg his help. She came, on her own terms, with her own power and her own secrets. And if he roused her at two AM to meet him, he could wait for her appearance until three.  
  
“I was starting to wonder,” the voice that drifted through from the courtyard was the same voice that she'd heard through the mobile, treading the razor thin line between lilting and madness. “If you'd been frightened off, Miss Adler. Or if you realized what you had wasn't as special as you thought.”  
  
She crossed the threshold from the lobby to the courtyard with nothing more than a change in the tone of her footsteps. The sharp gunshot on marble became a more muffled, treacherous sound on cobblestone. Jim Moriarty sat with his back to her, every line of his body language carefully indolent despite the crisp suit, his hand gesturing. The doorman, Moriarty's man, moved from where he had been shadowing Irene a step and a half behind and to her right, and approached the table, pulling out a chair at the table.  
  
An ostensible gesture of politeness, but she saw in it the calculation, the attempt to take back control of the meeting now that the ability to announce her presence was gone. Irene smiled, the curve of her lips like a blood red sickle against pale skin. “I know exactly what I have, and I know exactly how much you want it, Jim,” she answered, stepping forward and shedding the fur coat. The courtyard was sheltered by the walls of the hotel and warmed by the heaters scattered about, and Irene gave her wrap to Moriarty's man with a negligent, peremptory air. The man stood, wavering uncertainly for a moment at the sudden deviation from his script, and Irene took that time to slip into the chair, in control again.  
  
So _this_ was Jim Moriarty. Interesting. There was a distinct, careful mediocrity about his appearance, a face that was easily forgotten. A build that was easily dismissed. All cultivated, of course. It was in the eyes, the intensity that in some light looked like insanity (or was it insanity masquerading as intensity?), the careful, precise way he projected suave intimidation now despite a build that was obviously not meant for it. Very interesting indeed.  
  
She set her mobile on the table in front of them, not her cameraphone, obviously, but the mobile she had used to contact him, the proxy, and tapped a glossy fingernail on the table. “Now, should I say it's a pleasure, or would you rather dispense with the niceties and get down to business?”  
  
His eyes flicked down to the mobile phone and back up as quickly when he realized it was not the real thing, and a cool smile tugged at her lips as he met her eye again. His recognition that it wasn't the real thing, that she didn't trust him near enough to bring the real thing. Momentary irritation at having been deceived, at realizing she wasn't quite as easy to fool as his usual clients. “I expected you were someone who knew how to have both business and pleasure, or have I overestimated, Miss Adler?” A pause and he continued as if he had not stopped. “ _The Woman_ , you call yourself, the woman who what? Who plays games and find secrets she can't use...”  
  
“The Woman with the key to saving the world, or the match to let it burn,” she answered, leaning back in her seat. She caught Moriarty's man wavering, his attention drawn by her movements, but Moriarty himself remained unmoved. She'd expected that, that the consulting criminal wasn't going to be someone who could be as easily swayed and bought as the rich and powerful. She could already tell that what he liked was far different, that his tastes ran towards cruelty and destruction and the mental game more than physical release. She gave him a knowing, sidelong look, a hint of velvet laughter in her voice, “And I _know_ you like the idea of watching the world burn.”  
  
She knew how he would respond, knew how those who liked what he liked always responded, so when his reaction deviated from the script, Irene was momentarily surprised. “I can already make the world burn. I can make it burn so bright it would burn the heart out of you, if you had a heart.” His eyes gleamed with manic light, and he leaned across the table, the fine wool of his suit wrinkling as he rested his elbows on the tabletop. “No, no, no, I want something better than that from you, something much more _fun_.”  
  
For the first time since leaving the towncar, Irene felt a twinge of worry, a moment of uncertainty in exactly how this would go. But her expression remained cool, archly amused and utterly confident, as she raised an eyebrow in the face of his mad intensity. “You're already getting a secret that could topple the whole country, Jim.” A tug of a smile at her lips, the calculated condescension opposite his false politeness. “Not to mention half of what I can sell the rest for. Do you really think you're getting anything else from me?”  
  
The question simply made him laugh, high and condescending, the sort of laughter that put into Irene's mind of boys with ants and magnifying glasses grown up, men who found pleasure in crushing those they considered beneath themselves. Men who always ended up yielding, she reminded herself. Still, she continued with the beginning of caution worming its way into her mind. More cautious than she had been when she'd walked in announced by the gunfire beat of stiletto heels. “Money I can get without you,” he said dismissively, snapping his fingers. “No, no, no, Miss Adler, I'm not doing this for money. I'm doing this because I want to see you try to break the Virgin and make the Iceman beg.” He looked her over, that same fey gleam in his eyes. “I sincerely have my doubts that you can.”  
  
The obvious dismissal in his tone made her bristle, but Irene forced herself to remain calm, to keep her expression serene and untouched, untouchable. She turned her attention from Moriarty to the man masquerading as a footman, and her eyes swept over him. His expression remained stoic, but she could read his preferences plain on his face, in the line of his body, in the way he lingered. Control. Pain. Violence. But a need to take orders, to be ordered. Vicious, but a guard dog, a weapon to be pointed by the right hand.  
  
She returned her attention to the consulting criminal, and while she could read less in his carefully constructed facade, she still read some of what he liked regardless. The game was first and foremost, the cat and mouse chase in which he clearly saw himself as the king of cats in a kingdom of nothing but mice. But beyond that too there was the drive, the relentless seeking for something, something more. She wasn't certain what that something else is, but she recognized that need, that drive. Irene shifted in her seat, uncrossing her legs, and in the gesture brushed the fine stiletto heel of her shoe against Moriarty's crisp trouser leg. Deliberate. On the knife's edge between threat and invitation. “ _Every_ man and woman has a breaking point. If you know as much about me as you like to think, you'd know I am very good at finding that out.”  
  
He scoffed, dismissive. “Those little people you play with, maybe. But these are the big fish. The Holmes boys.” He tilted his head, his beady black eyes studying her without blinking. It reminded Irene of the Tower, of the ravens that the tourists were all so enamoured of. She, on the other hand, remembered that the ravens pecked out eyes, sought out soft tissues and ate them up. “You're not the Iceman's type. No, not Mycroft Holmes. Too devoted to his _country_. That and that umbrella jammed up his backside.” He waved again, as if the thought of Mycroft Holmes was an annoying fly.  
  
“And the Virgin. He might not even have a type.” Moriarty took a deep breath, and Irene could practically see him shudder with anticipation at the very thought. That was important, that was information, something to be kept back. She merely raised an eyebrow, waiting for him to continue, and he did, with a singsong cadence that made a shiver of warning snake down Irene's back, “Virgin Sherlock, on the side of the angels. Clever enough to solve puzzles, even your little puzzle, but cares too much to be any _fun_. Boring, boring.”  
  
“Maybe for you,” she answered coolly. The names of the two, the Holmes boys as he called them, she kept those in the back of her mind, for research purposes later, once she was back at her flat. For the moment though, she worked through what she did know, and the beginnings of a plan began to form. She smiled, all blood red lips and razor wire sharpness. “But then if you knew how to break the Holmes boys, you wouldn't be looking to a dominatrix to do it for you, now would you, dear?”  
  
Jim Moriarty's eyes narrowed at that, and Irene leaned forward, her red-tipped fingernails drumming calmly on the wrought iron table. This was delicate, to push the right buttons, to press on what she knew he liked without tipping her hand. This was the part of playing her clients that was so easy, that got her what she wanted, but with Moriarty's eyes gleaming with insanity there was a danger here that had never been present with her clients. The danger of failure. She rose from her seat and stepped around the table, ignoring Moriarty's man and his unsubtle reach for a weapon. Her eyes stayed on Jim Moriarty as her mind ran through what she knew, what she knew he _liked_ , and her stiletto heels clicked sharply on the cobblestones.  
  
“Interesting where the consulting criminal goes when he finds a problem he can't solve. Can't figure out how to break a man, so he finds a woman. Just like everyone else.”  
  
The tension was almost palpable, and Irene felt more than saw Moriarty's man shift, then stand down, as the consulting criminal rose from his seat to face her. Rage fairly glowed in his eyes, violence and tension in the line of his body, and Irene forced her expression to remain smug, archly amused and dismissive. “Do you really think you can play with the big boys, Irene? Think you can push and get what you want, when you're just one... tiny little _speck of dust_.” His words were dismissive, but he drew up close, violence in every twitch of his fingers, in the movement of muscle in his step. His hand closed on her wrist, and despite his carefully average frame, she felt the strength, the threat in his hand as he closed his fingers around her wrist. “I will _crush_ you.”  
  
She arched an eyebrow in response, and despite the fact that his hand was like a vise grip around her wrist, Irene took the last step into his personal space, her designer dress up against his designer suit. Determination seemed to snap in the air like static electricity; there was nothing of desire, of heat or simmering tension between them. This was something simpler, colder; two predators face to face, both of them utterly convinced of their own prowess, utterly intent on proving a point.  
  
“You need me, pet,” she reminded him, her voice low as she pressed a bright red nail against his tie, right in his solar plexus. “You need someone to make the Virgin care, to break him when he does. Because you can't do it, can you, Jim?” Her eyes narrowed, and her fingers curled around his tie as a smile like a sickle curved on her lips. The silk was cool against her hand, and she pulled it free, his tie-pin tinking against the cobblestones as she did. The sound was incongruously loud in the night and the still air of the hotel courtyard. His grip tightened on her wrist; there would be bruises in the morning, but Irene laughed in response, her own grip unwavering, fingers in his tie, pulling it, and him with it, to her. “The puppetmaster with all his puppets and all his resources, doesn't do him any good.”  
  
Moriarty's eyes fairly glowed with black rage with every word she spoke, and Irene swallowed back the fear that he would simply break her wrist. But that was the gambit, of course, the risk she took. Her eyes narrowed as she flexed her fingers beneath his grip, and a wild, mad smile spread over Moriarty's face. “And the Woman with all the secrets and nowhere to use them thinks she can do better,” he replied, his voice lilting as his other hand gripped her hip and pulled her close.  
  
This close, there was no mistaking the telltale throb of blood, the press of the beginning of an erection against her thigh. She was under no illusion that this was a matter of physical attraction; it was obvious that this was business, a fight between predators, a battle to draw blood. But she'd seen something else too, a flicker of something in his eyes, an almost imperceptible twitch, and it was the hint of a weakness, a silent tell of information, something to... leverage.  
  
She didn't struggle to pull her wrist away from his grip, instead slowly, deliberately wound his tie around her knuckles, knowing the gesture put increasing pressure against his throat. His breathing remained steady, practiced, but the continued throb of blood against her thigh gave away far more than his carefully neutral expression and the rage burning in his eyes.  
  
“'The Virgin' isn't just a pet name, not this time,” she said, her voice crisp, sharp even as she reached his collar. One long red nail curled upward, dragging a bright line up his throat from the collar to his chin. An almost imperceptible change in his breathing, a sharpness ruthlessly tamped down on but not fast enough. She pressed against him, demanding despite soft curves and the illusion of yielding femininity, and felt him respond. Not to the touch of warm flesh and soft thigh, no. To the finger at this throat, the scratch of a claw. “But 'cares too much to be any fun'. Obvious what to do then, even if you can't see it.”  
  
He pushed at her wrist, as if to bend it back, and opened his mouth to speak, but Irene held up a finger, pressing the long nail to his lips. Her eyes fairly glittered with adamant and steel as she continued, “I'll do the talking, dear. Just try to keep up.” Another twitch of his arousal against her leg, and Irene shifted her stance, brushing deliberately against his well-tailored pants. His eyes were on hers, and she practically felt the heat, the sheer anger and _loathing_ , in his gaze. Her smile grew, as she felt him twitch against her again.  
  
That was the game with Jim Moriarty, to make clear that she knew what he liked, and that she could play the body behind the mind. That she wasn't some simple client to do what he liked. “Make him _care_ , pet,” she said, leaning close. The words rolled off her tongue like a velvet purr, and her teeth scraped hard against the curve of his ear. She wielded pain like a surgeon's scalpel, the promise of it like a whip, and as her hand tightened on his tie, the knot working its way around his throat, Irene Adler, the dominatrix, The Woman, smiled a smile like barbed wire against the heat and anger roiling off the consulting criminal.  
  
She smiled, because it had become painfully obvious to all in the courtyard that she was exactly as good as she claimed, and only then did Irene loosen her grip on Moriarty's tie, did she let his tie go and withdraw the promising bite of a fingernail dragged across skin. “I know what you like, Jim,” she said, her fingers closing on his, still gripping her wrist tight enough to bruise. “And I can make you feel every last bit of it, pet, whether or not you want to.” She pried his hand away from her wrist, breaking his grasp one finger at a time. Her voice remained low, her pleasure at the game obvious in the way vowels tripped off her tongue.  
  
When she'd freed her wrist, Irene took a deliberate, purposeful step away from him, the staccato beat of her heels against the cobblestone like gunshots once again in the hotel courtyard before she sat back down, her fingertips gleaming red in the night. “Now that we've had a chance to talk, I think you'll agree I can do the same for your little problem with the Virgin.” The loathing in Moriarty's eyes was slow to fade, but Irene could feel it in the pit of her stomach, in her very bones, that the odds had been tipped in her favour in this game. His eyes burned, but a small mad smile began to worm its way along Moriarty's face.  
  
“Now this I'm going to have to see, Miss Adler. If you can make the Virgin beg and the Iceman cry.” He didn't sit down; she was impressed. To remain standing was to admit the impression she'd made on him. To sit would have been to put them back on even footing, to hide. But he hadn't and instead gestured to the man who had stood stock still through the entire exchange, who had said not one word despite the way his eyes had followed the performance. The man nodded and stepped behind Irene's chair, a clear dismissal. Irene only smiled and rose again as Moriarty continued, snapping his fingers towards the front of the hotel. “Sebastian'll be in touch, darling, but don't forget, if you can't deliver, I'll set the wolves on that pretty little neck.”


End file.
